Monday, April 28, 2008

On Sylv's request, here comes the menu of my nephew's confirmation meal. It will be prepared and served by Toño, Tina and me this Thursday (a.k.a. May Day, a.k.a. Ascension Day, a.k.a Peter's Confirmation Day). Since this will be lunch, we will restrict ourselves to four courses.

SoupBeef Consommé Celestine (Flädlisuppe) based on a home-made broth.

SaladIceberg lettuce with cucumber and melon balls at a Sbrinz dressing.

Saturday, April 26, 2008

This morning did not start as I like a Saturday morning to start. Our Jura coffee maker went out of service mere 40 days after the warranty had expired:

Real panic broke out since we will have to cook for 18 people on May Day and we've planned to serve them hot and full-flavoured coffee after the Vin Santo.

There was little hope when I called the help service, where a friendly lady explained to me that I can't fix this and that I have to send it back to the factory for repair. Of course this was no option and I already saw my just received bonus being force-invested in a new coffee machine. It took until three o'clock until we found a shop where we found the answer we sought: "Yes, we have the spare part on stock and we can fix this before May Day".

Who was I to believe that Roger Federer is able to make a coffee machine that last? I should have been warned when I first saw him in an add for those machines. I'm not impressed by this performance.

Sunday, April 20, 2008

One of the discoveries on our trip to México was Pinzán, though, it's official name is Pithecellobium dulce. The Pinzán tree has dozens of names in Central and northern South America, and the Caribbean, Florida, Guam and Southeast Asia.

The Pinzán is drought-resistant and can survive in dry land, which is perfect for the hot spot where Toño comes from.

This is the edible pulp of the Pinzán:

They taste a bit sweet. The pods are similar to the ones of the tamarind, though the Pinzán is not very closely related to it:

The name of the boy is Procuro, he's one of Toño's many cousins. And finally the entire tree:

Saturday, April 19, 2008

Swiss left-wing newspaper WoZ has announced that it has started to take over the largest Swiss bank UBS. The WoZ intents to turn this avaricious yet depraved money house into the first decent major bank of the world.

And that's how it works: For every new subscriber, the WoZ buys a UBS share, and so, piece by piece, the WoZ becomes the majority share holder. As I'm typing, only 1'032'998'981 subscriptions are missing. Join the movement!

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Two and a half years ago the Swiss citizens accepted the law for civil unions for The Gays™ in a referendum. I took one and a half year until the law could be exerted, because the institutions needed time to modify all those forms as they claimed (Spain needed less than a week). However, this was still not enough time to adjust tax forms, for which they had an additional year at hand.

Here in Switzerland, married couples are punished tax-wise - that is, they usually pay more taxes than singles. Of course, this unjust system has also to be applied for the The Gays™. Fair enough.

Swiss tax forms have to be filled and signed by the man/husband under his name and then the wife has to sign them as well (yes, Swiss politicians still want to keep wives close to the stove).

Well, the combination of both went terribly wrong. The good news is that the Latin part of Switzerland got it actually right. In the German speaking part, only the cantons Zug and Solothurn managed to do so. Most did nothing - that is, one of the couple has to sign as husband the other as wife.

Some software solutions did only accept husbands that are actually male - weird since civil unions are also open to lesbians and I've never heard that lesbians don't do computers.

Half way right got it Basel-Country and Aargau, which give you the option to tell whether the wife is male of female (der oder die Ehefrau).

However, only fools expect to be treated with dignity by the tax office.

Monday, April 07, 2008

We're back in México, D.F. only minutes from going to the airport to return to Switzerland.

The baptism of Luis Edurado was a huge family event. I did not take pictures of the priest performing his duties in the templo (as churches are called here, since the term church refers to the institution), however, I took this picture of Toño with his father, brothers and sisters after hours of feasting and dancing:

The rest of the week we spent in Toño's home town, letting Toño spend some quality time with his godson. We also visited his sister Leo, who works as the dentist in a hospital for the poor in a small village in western Michoacán. The week was concluded with a big quails dinner at his third sister's place in Morelia.

As I said, now we are back in México, D.F. relaxing in the town house of a good friend of Toño's. It's a lovely place, full of art collected in the entire world and surrounded by bougainvillea plants. There is no better place than to say farewell to México.

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